ACLU files federal complaint over single-gender classes in DeLand

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal complaint saying the single-gender classes at DeLand’s Woodward Avenue Elementary violate Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in federally-funded education programs.

By Annie Martinannie.martin@news-jrnl.com

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal complaint saying the single-gender classes at DeLand’s Woodward Avenue Elementary violate Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in federally-funded education programs. The complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights names Volusia County schools and Stetson University, which provides training and places student teachers in the Woodward Avenue program. The ACLU alleges the single-gender classes reinforce stereotypes and encourage disparate treatment of boys and girls. “Although educational innovation is desirable, an experiment in a public school that ignores fundamental civil rights and federal law cannot be allowed to continue,” according to the New York City-based organization’s complaint.Volusia Superintendent Margaret Smith and Stetson officials declined to comment about the complaint on Wednesday afternoon, saying they had not had enough time to review the complaint and prepare responses. Federal laws allow single-gender classes, but districts must provide a rationale for offering boys- or girls-only classes, offer co-ed options and review the program every two years. About 200 Woodward Avenue students in kindergarten through fourth-grade are enrolled in single-gender classes this year. Parents choose to participate in the program, and co-ed classes are available at every grade level. The ACLU also announced complaints against single-gender classes in Broward and Hernando counties on Wednesday, as well as similar programs in Texas schools. The organization launched a challenge against Hillsborough County’s single-gender classes earlier this year. Bunnell Elementary in Flagler County also offers single-gender classes in kindergarten through second-grade, though it was not named in the ACLU complaint. Nationally, more schools are separating boys and girls. Only about a dozen public schools offered single-gender classrooms in 2002, but during the 2011-2012 school year, at least 506 U.S. public schools offered boys-only and girls-only classrooms, according to the National Association for Choice in Education, which supports single-gender classes.Proponents say many boys and girls have different learning styles and the single-gender classes allow teachers to tailor their instruction so they can best meet their students’ needs. Boys often need more physical activity, supporters say, while girls prefer quieter classroomsKathy Piechura-Couture, a professor of education at Stetson, said last year the single-gender classes far outscored the mixed-gender classes at Woodward Avenue immediately after the inception of the program more than a decade ago. She said now the children in all-boys and all-girls rooms still outpace their peers, but the gap has narrowed, and she feels that’s because the teachers in the single-gender classrooms have shared their best strategies with their colleagues. But the Woodward Avenue program promotes “precisely the type of sex stereotype that Title IX, the law prohibiting sex discrimination in education, was designed to prevent,” said Galen Sherwin, a senior staff attorney for the ACLU. The organization’s complaint argues research suggesting boys and girls are wired differently is not sound. The organization submitted public records requests to school districts across the state that offer single-gender program, she said, and filed complaints against those deemed to be in violation of the federal law. “We think the program there has been infected with sex stereotypes from the outset,” Sherwin said. “We’ve asked for an investigation from the Department of Education and a remedy that would expunge the sex stereotypes.”She said that would require the school to disband the single-gender classes and reverse the training teachers have received about the learning differences between boys and girls.

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